Paul Boutin needs a job. [via Scripting News]
John Robb: Who said anything about hijackers? It sounds like the plane fell apart in the sky.
The Register: Site requires Java to sign up for .NET training. Brilliant.
The Register: Online anonymity HOWTO. Anonymity and privacy might seem expensive, until you consider the alternatives.
The Register: XP’s file search doesn’t work. Don’t worry, it’s only broken searching in non-Microsoft documents.
Virtual keyboards
Virtual Keyboards. [via Tomalak's Realm] The developers envision
subway cars filled with commuters typing in midair as they key
messages into their mobile phones.
Um, yeah, right. The possibilities for mockery here are, no pun intended, virtually infinite. “No really, officer, I wasn’t molesting her, I was typing. Where’s my keyboard, you ask? It’s virtual. No really. Hey, wait, what are you, ow, hey, I’m innocent, I tell you, innocent.” Next I’ll introduce you to my imaginary friend, and we can all pretend to talk dirty to each other on my virtual keyboard.
Meanwhile, there’s the niggly little problem that the virtual keyboards don’t actually work. From the same article: A
demo of the product didn’t work so well, however, and produced the
gibberish ‘DNiSP’ when the tester was asked to type ‘Comdex.’
“The developers envision subway cars filled with commuters typing gibberish in midair as they post to Slashdot,” a spokesman did not add.
Well, that’s not fair. There were two separate products from different companies; the other one apparently works a little better. However, both devices are too bulky. Nonfunctional prototypes of the final products are much smaller.
Wow, that’s amazing! Look, Bob, if we take out all this functionality, we can make it smaller.
You would think that such a product would at least be wireless, but it isn’t. Both models demonstrated this week are wired. However, vendors say by
the time their products become commercially available they will
support the wireless Bluetooth protocol.
A virtual keyboard with a real cord. Brilliant.
So what we have here is a product which attempts to solve problems that people don’t have, based on technology that doesn’t work, which is too bulky and unwieldy to use anyway. All for the low low price of $50. Sounds like Groove.
Full disclosure
Bruce Schneier: Bug secrecy vs. full disclosure [via Slashdot] Culp compares the practice of publishing vulnerabilities to shouting “Fire” in a crowded movie theater. What he forgets is that there actually is a fire, the vulnerabilities exist regardless.
The Register comes down on the side of full disclosure, in their own smarmy way.
Incidentally, I noticed that Scott Culp’s essay is linked to from the latest Microsoft security vulnerability:
Q. Why isn’t there a patch for this issue?
A. The person who discovered this vulnerability has chosen to handle it irresponsibly, and has deliberately made this issue public only a few days after reporting it to Microsoft. It is simply not possible to build, test and release a patch within this timeframe and still meet reasonable quality standards.
Daniel Dennett is a modern-day philosopher who pisses off a lot of other philosophers by insisting that their grandiose systems are built not on logic, but on a failure of imagination. Paraphrasing: “First it starts innocently with ‘I can not conceive of X.’ But then the philosopher goes too far, sliding into ‘No one can conceive of X.’ And then they go completely overboard: ‘It is inconceiveable that X.’ I don’t have a quarrel with the original premise, but I draw a different conclusion: ‘Try harder.’”
Memo to Scott Culp: if you can’t conceive of how to keep your software secure in a full-disclosure world, that’s your own fault. Try harder.
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© 2001–9 Mark Pilgrim